Podcasts about free to be talks

  Jen, Annie and Lauren are joined by Renae Regehr of Free To Be Talks to discuss how to support our middle school kids in developing media literacy and better body image. Teaching kids to navigate social media and the messages about their bodies is so important. Learn what to say when you don’t know what to say and enjoy this stimulating conversation. What you’ll hear in this episode: How Free To Be Talks was born Which age groups responded best to the curriculum Embodied media literacy: what does it mean? Head knowledge vs lived experiences The blind spots we have about the impact of media messaging Helping our kids cultivate self-compassion Do you really need to have all the answers as a parent? Being vulnerable with our kids in an age appropriate way Role modelling for our kids Appearance-based compliments and the need to balance them Being mindful of the language we use to describe our children’s bodies Body acceptance: accepting our own bodies and those of our kids The subtext of unattainable beauty ideals Equipping our kids to separate their value as people from their social media metrics Finding validation from within Being mindful of how much of our identity is rooted in our appearance Healing body image issues in context, with the help of others Body diversity on social media, feeling seen and represented Maintaining perspective about the importance of our appearances Being judicious about how much mental energy we devote to our appearance   Resources: Free To Be Talks Hillary McBride podcast mothers daughters body image Sisters podcast Learn more about Balance365 Life here Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Play, or Android so you never miss a new episode! Visit us on Facebook| Follow us on Instagram| Check us out on Pinterest Join our free Facebook group with over 40k women just like you! Did you enjoy the podcast? Leave us a review on Apple Podcasts or Google Play! It helps us get in front of new listeners so we can keep making great content. Discount code: Free2bbalanced Transcript Annie: Welcome to Balance365 Life radio, a podcast that delivers honest conversations about food, fitness, weight, and wellness. I'm your host Annie Brees along with Jennifer Campbell and Lauren Koski. We are personal trainers, nutritionists and founders of Balance365. Together we coach thousands of women each day and are on a mission to help them feel healthy, happy, and confident in their bodies on their own terms. Join us here every week as we discuss hot topics pertaining to our physical, mental, and emotional wellbeing with amazing guests. Enjoy. Annie: Welcome to Balance365 Life radio. This is your host Annie Brees and today we are talking about middle schoolers and media. Media is reaching our youth younger and younger by the day. In fact, the average kid spends eight hours a day consuming media and it's one of the primary reasons as to why 40% of six to 12 year olds don't like who they are because of how they look. Negative body image, depression, anxiety, and eating disorders are on the rise, but thankfully women like Renae Regehr are taking action against that. Renae founded Free To Be Talks, a nonprofit organization that promotes positive body image which gives tools to youth, parents and educators to help them filter through media and develop their individual strengths. Through her MA of Counseling Psychology, Renae developed and tested a research based curriculum inside Free To Be and to date over 2,500 boys and girls have gone through the program. Renae is a registered clinical counselor and also contributing blogger for the Huffington Post and her work has been featured in Time, Darling, Good Men Project, Everyday Feminism and many more. On today's episode, Renae, Jen and I discuss three important points in helping middle school age children develop positive body image and if you listen to the very end, Renae shares a really special gift and opportunity with our listeners. I know you're going to love this episode. Enjoy Annie: Ladies, we have a full house today. Again, we have a special guest. Renee, welcome. How are you? Renae:  I'm good. Thank you so much for having me. Annie: I am so excited to have you here because Jen has just raved about everything that you're doing. Can you tell, how did you and Jen meet? Renae: We met, I believe, through mutual connections. Jen: Yeah. Through Hillary Mcbride who we've had on our podcast twice. And Hillary, I expressed to Hillary that I, you know, I do all this work and we have this worldwide audience, but I still feel my ultimate vision for my life is that I'm actually making an impact in my community where my children are growing up. And she said, "You have to meet Renae. She runs a nonprofit called Free To Be Talks. So I started following you on Instagram and then as soon, the next time you offered a training, I signed up. Renae: Yes. And there's been some changes since then and I can't wait to talk about them. Annie:  Renae, you are a registered clinical counselor. How did you get into this Free To Be Talks, like, how did that come about? Renae:  Oh, I feel like it's been like my life work, really. But when I was going through my master's, I developed a curriculum for a group class that I was running. And at the time I had a friend that was in the school system in my hometown and she said, you know, I want to run this program. And I said, "Okay, well I've developed this rudimentary curriculum, why don't we run this body image program together?" And so these grades six and seven girls volunteered on their lunch hour to be a part of this group. And it was so eye opening because not only did the same struggles that I had gone through when I was a teen, those things were coming up again for the girls but I would say there even more pressures that the girls were facing with the rise of social media and just different factors that were impacting them. Renae:  And so I went to my research supervisor at the time and I said, "This is what I'm doing. I'm running the program. Can I create this for my master's thesis?" And he said, "Well, if there's a problem in the literature, then yeah, go for it." So I said, "Okay, challenge accepted. And I dove deep into the research literature and I wanted to know, like, what had been done, what still needed to be done, what was helpful, what wasn't maybe so helpful. And then from there I emerged and with this new vision of okay, this is what's been helpful, this is what we need to do. And really from that, a couple of things. One was that we needed to move more from a pathology perspective. So not just focusing on what are problems with body image, but what do we do now that we know what these problems are like, what the "So what?" to this problem here? Renae: Where do we go from? And really utilizing them like a strengths perspective so we can deconstruct something but then we need to be able to build it back up again. And then the second thing with that is we need to include boys in this conversation and although boys have been included in this conversation, more so in the last five to 10 years, I would say, historically and previously body image has primarily been thought of as a girls issue. And so from that I approached my supervisor and I said, "Hey, this is what I found. There is definitely a need in healthy body image programs. And so I started to create Free To Be, and I actually ran with grade tens as my first group and did the analyses with them. And although the research showed that it was effective, just my clinical intuition and when I was running the program, it felt like I was doing a lot more intervention with the kids. Renae:  And even though they were receptive and you know, we had good conversations, we then ran it with grade six and sevens. And that was really where we hit the sweet spot because these issues were becoming so relevant to them. Their bodies were starting to change, their bodies were on their mind a lot more and they were really engaging with the material. And so from there it started to just take off and I realized, you know, I can't just keep this to myself. And that always had been my vision that I wanted to expand it beyond me. Years ago I actually had a blog and it was called Bigger Than My Voice because I wanted it to be bigger than me. And so from there after, as I was developing free to be, I realized I can make this bigger than me and I've had so many incredible women come around that have either identified with my story or have had kids that have impacted or they've had body image struggles when they were younger and they wanted to take it, run with it and teach the curriculum around North America now. So it's kind of like the short version of everything. Annie:  I love it because- Jen: I had my own goosebump moment. It's amazing. Like I would say grade six is when I started becoming aware of my body. Like everything happened a lot for me in grade six. It was like all of a sudden boys became very, like, a thing in my life and my body started changing and a lot of, and even other girls, their bodies were changing at a more rapid rate than mine. And I was like, "What's wrong with my body?" And you just, yeah, it's grade six was, yeah, a big year for me, personally. Renae:  Yeah. Grade six, grade six, grade seven. And because girls, you know, we develop earlier than boys, you know, there's a wide range of like when we're developing and our bodies are just so much more on our minds then. And so it makes sense that to be able to be armed with tools about, you know, what's going on around us, how is this impacting us? Could be, is so helpful to be like, "I'm not weird. I'm normal, this is normal. This is normal. What we're all going through." Jen: Yeah, absolutely. The other thing, Renae, is why I was so excited to find you is because we work with women and I like, I love working with them. I'm sure many of them are listening. I love working with them, but sometimes I start to feel like, "Oh," like I just, I feel like we're on the reactive side of, you know, building communities and treating, you know, this issue where I want it to be on the preventative. And I also wanted to be involved on the preventative side because I don't want to keep raising generations of women that just need treatment, right. Lauren:  Yeah. And I'll add to that too, like, because we work with women, we have them coming to us say, "Okay, how can I prevent this for my child? What can I do to be that preventative role model for them?" Renae:  And there's so much that parents can do. That is something that I've, that I always, when I went on, whenever we run the Free To Be program, there is a pamphlet that we hand out in the beginning and we always stress to teachers, to parents, to whoever's running the program, hand these out because these conversations that we are starting at school are so much more impactful if they can be continued at home and deepened at home and expanded at home because that's where so much learning occurs. Annie:  Absolutely. And something that I think we hear often in our community too is that women want to have these conversations or parents are obviously, we work pretty exclusively with women. They want to have these conversations with their girlfriends, with their kids, but they're so worried about if they're saying the right thing or not that they just don't say anything at all. Like, you know, "Okay, my daughter comes home and is asking about calories or someone called her fat or you know, she's being bullied or she's being picked on or she wants to lose weight or she wants to get a fitbit. I mean it's just these daily conversations that they're almost like, I'm so worried I'm going to say the wrong thing and they're gonna like permanently feel that type of way forever and ever. So it's really great to have you on here because I actually, I said, "Can you just give us the main talking points and kind of do's and don'ts about how we can help promote positive body image for middle schoolers?" Which is like your jam, right? Renae: Oh yeah. Oh yeah. And even when you sent me that request in that talk, I was like, well, you know, we could just talk about it and where it goes because we literally could talk about this for hours and hours and hours. Annie: Absolutely. Renae: But that can just be overwhelming. So- Annie:  Yes. So you came back with three, which I appreciate. These are the three, like the, really, I'm guessing kind of the big rocks that you feel are really important. If you want a place to start, these would be three good areas to spend some effort or give some attention to, yeah? Renae: Yes. And even the way I structured those three, they are, we could talk about them in depth for a lot, a long time. And so do you want to go through them one by one? Or do you want me to sort of list them off? Annie: Yeah, well here, the first one that you listed off was develop embodied media literacy. Not just head knowledge, but experiences that help them know and experienced their bodies as good and powerful. Can you tell me what that means? Renae:  Okay. This has become a big one for me recently because I cannot tell you enough. I go do these talks. I do these presentations in addition to running Free To Be, and I will talk to kids or I'll talk to teenagers and they're so smart. They are very smart, they're savvy, they know what's going on. And so we'll talk about Photoshop, we'll talk about appearance pressures, we'll talk about things that are impacting about social media, how it can be used as a tool for good or as a tool that can, you know, be a portal into isolation or anxiety or this comparison trap that you get stuck in and they can be so articulate and their responses and yet then they'll tell me, "Yeah, this can really impact some people, but it doesn't impact me." Renae:  And that's just not how our brains work. What we are exposed to is going to impact us. Like, my brain isn't locked in some special fortress where I'm not impacted by the messages and ideas around me. And, so they can be critical of these messages or ideas and and yet they embody them at the same time. It was, I was struck so much by this realization a couple of months ago when I was chatting with a particular group of girls and this girl was telling me about all of these things, and here she was with fake eyelashes and embodying all the appearance ideals and on her phone on Instagram scrolling through things. And it's not that wanting to invest in your appearance or following beauty trends is bad or wrong or anything like that. It's the fact that there's this disconnect that we think that things impact other people but not us. Jen: 100% we see this all the time. I know exactly what you, they like, they know but they can't embody. There is just a total and I have been there so I get it like it's- Renae:  Yes and I get it because there's so many factors that are involved in creating our body image that go into our body image. And so I really started to stress this embodied media literacy because it's not just head knowledge. We can have head knowledge until we are blue in the face with, like, understanding something. But if we don't experience our bodies as good, as agents of power, as a place to connect with others, as something that is powerful, then a lot of the message is lost because our minds and our bodies are so connected and we need to be able to experience our bodies as good. Renae:  And so in presentations I never just talk and so much of Free to Be isn't just talking. It's experiencing your body as something that is good and moreover we're so much in relationship with others. So we need others. We need to have that experience where others experience us and we feel experienced. We receive the experience of being seen as good enough for who we are. And so there's so many things that we can do to get that embodied media literacy. But that's that embodied piece. And then the media literacy media literacy piece is really just helping them critically digest and understand like what is going on in the media around us and not just the media, like in our friends and in our family. Because all of these fears are so important because we ended up internalizing these messages ourselves and they become our narrative and the way we live our life. And so it's not just the media literacy, the critical digestion, it's also the embodiment piece that we need those two together so much.   Jen: So would you say, Hillary McBride talked about this in her first podcast with us because Hillary McBride experienced an eating disorder and actually she ended up in inpatient care and she talked about how she said her mom would tell her to eat her lunch at school, but she would come home and her mom's lunch would be uneaten in the fridge. And is that kind of what you're saying? Like it has to, we have to embody this message. Renae: Yes. I'm just trying to think about the best way to say this because it's, we can tell our kids that they are, you know, they're beautiful, they're wonderful til like tell it to the moon and back. We can say that to them over and over and over again. But if they don't see us also embodying the message, if they see us, you know, talking disparagingly to ourselves. If they see us, cook a delicious meal and then we serve them this wonderful food and then we're off in the corner just eating her salad and like restricting ourselves in what we're eating. Those, they're developing an inconsistent message about what they're about, messages about food, about their bodies. But they're learning also simultaneously that some things are good, some things are bad. And our parents model that behavior to us from such a young age. You know that from the comments that we make about, you know, "Oh, you're so beautiful," to what we eat, to how our clothes fit and we don't, I've got to stop right there for a second. We can, like, we can talk about each one those specifically- Jen: For ever and ever and ever and ever. Renae: Exactly but there is, our parents are so influential in how, in embodying and delivering this message and living and living this message. Yeah. Jen: Brene Brown talks about this quite a bit. She has a book called imperfect parenting that it is the only parenting book I will ever recommend to anybody. But she talks about what do you, you know, it is far more impactful to be self compassionate than to tell your kids they should be self compassionate. Renae:  Yes, because that outer voice becomes their voice. Jen: Absolutely. Renae: When they are, when you mess up as a parent and when I mess up as a parent because oh my goodness, I do mess up and I make mistakes or even simple things like I'm driving and I take the wrong turn, instead of being like, "Oh my goodness, I'm such an idiot" being like "Ah! Mistakes happen" and, or I mess up at home or I mess up doing something else. And you know, being able to repair and model that repairing and being able to model being disappointed, even with the actions that I've made. And doing that in a healthy way isn't a sign of weakness. I think it's a sign of being able to model a way of being because our emotions are, we all have emotions and they're fundamental to the way we live and experience life. Renae: And so if I can give my children the gift of, you know, this is how, these are healthy ways that you can experience sadness or anger or like those tough emotions that don't feel comfortable, then we are, I think that's a big gift to be able to give them. Jen: Totally. Renae: And so many body image issues, are tied to insecurities, feeling anxious, feeling not enough, feeling embarrassed, feeling shame. And nobody likes sitting with those. They're not, they're uncomfortable. And so learning to be able to sit with those as parents and model that, oh, it's such a gift and it's hard. Oh it's so hard. Jen: It's so hard. And I also, I was talking with one of our Balance365ers about this last week. She struggles with caring for herself, you know, being self caring and self compassionate. And I think that it's important to understand that, well, not understand, but just to note, it might not feel natural for us, especially if we were raised by somebody who was, you know, very hard on herself or hard on us. And I think that was pretty typical that our parents came from a place of shaming, right, to discipline. And Brene Brown talks in her book about how if you're a parent who, you know, didn't shame your kids, it's like you would be shamed for not shaming them. So it was just so that's how everybody parented. And so now we have this, these generations of people who really struggle with shame and there's an element that comes in as far as being self compassionate and self loving and more, having a positive body image things, a dialogue, I guess I should say. Jen:  There's such a thing as faking it til you make it right. Like, it might not feel natural, but, it's like, I just feel so strongly on the days when I just, I don't want to be self compassionate. I feel responsibility to be self compassionate for my children because I know they're watching and I never want them to question it or it to feel unnatural. I don't want them to struggle with the same things I did. And so I just sometimes don't have the energy to be kind to myself. It's just, it's in my nature to be really hard on myself. And I think, but I always have the energy for my kids and I just, I, yeah. So even when embodiment doesn't feel natural for me I feel like I feel this sense that I have to, you know, I have to for my children. And so yeah, I think a lot of people wait to take action on them. We hear this all the time in a self love sense, but they're waiting to be kind to themselves because they're waiting to learn to love themselves, but- Renae: They need feel that right. before they act on it, right, yeah, Jen: Right. But it comes from actions of self care. Renae: And it's the same thing that you would, we would tell a client that's struggling with depression. You don't wait to go for a walk. You don't wait to feel better til you go for a walk. You go for a walk and then you'll feel better. And it's the same thing with these acts of self compassion and it does feel foreign and we can validate that even in ourselves and be like, "Yeah, this feels really weird and uncomfortable but I'm still going to try it and I'm going to do it anyways because I know it's the right thing to do even if it is uncomfortable." And even as parents, you know, we want to be, we want to have shoulders that are big enough for our kids to know that, you know, they can come to us with their big emotions and our shoulders are big enough to handle and to help them to support them. Renae: So I think there's, you know, I like what you're articulating that with our kids we want to be able to model that and you know, being aware of who is the adult and who's the child. And yet at the same time being vulnerable to model what it's like to be disappointed or to be uncomfortable with yourself. I think that, I think that it's a tension that we have to, we have to grapple with and we have to, we may not always get that right perfectly, but it's something that there's no one way or the other way that we can go in order to have a healthy relationship, we need to be able to say, "Okay, you know, this is a hard day for me. I'm having a hard day. I don't have a lot of patience right now. And then whether we tell them the details, whether that's age appropriate or not is something else to consider that we need to be mindful of, you know, depending how old they are because we don't want to put them in a parental role. But at the same time, you know, if they're older than we, even when they're younger telling them, you know, "Mommy's having a hard day or I'm having a hard day. But I'm a big girl." My daughter's two. Jen: I'm a big girl. Renae: I'm a big girl and I can handle it. But just, you know, teaching that, that it's okay that even as adults we have hard days too. Annie: Yeah. Jen: Yeah. Annie:  I think that's beautiful. It's not, so what I hear you saying Renae is that it's not that you need to, like, be perfect all the time. It's that, like, there's power in expressing, like, "Hey, I'm struggling too or this is hard for me or this is difficult or I'm overwhelmed or I'm angry about this, but this is how I'm going to handle it or this is what I'm going to do about it, or this is my choice." And I think that's great because you know, I think there is pressure to feel like, especially when it comes in terms of body image, like I said at the beginning to say all the right things all the right time and like, to have all the answers and it's like, maybe you don't know, you know, like I don't, I don't know. How do you feel about that? What do you think? Jen:  Yeah, what do you think? Annie:  -can be a great answer. Just have a discussion. Like you don't have to like have this perfect like Brene Brown answer, Renae: Or even "Let's go find the answer together." Jen: Yeah. Annie: Yeah. Renae: Right. And, that being committed to finding an answer and to finding a solution, wanting to do that together in a way that's healthy and productive not only teaches that, you know, you don't have to have all the answers, but also how to problem solve and how to, find some answers and then to be, to, to be stuck is, we all get stuck sometimes and it sucks being stuck, stuck, stuck. And, and as a parent, you know, we really want to be able to provide that roadmap. Something that has been so helpful to me, even just not even as a therapist but as like a because I have three children and they're all very different in my son's eight months old. I have two year old daughter and an eight year old son and I have this idea of, you know, how I want my kids to be and I don't want them to struggle and I don't want them to have big problems in their life, like any parent. Renae: And yet then sometimes when I parent, I think of myself as a construction worker who, like, takes a two by four and I'm hammering together this house that I am creating. But that's totally not the way parenting works. Parenting is more like tending to a garden and it's a plot of land that has its own type of soil. Each soil is a bit different. Even when you move down the road, you know, slugs get in, there's different types of, there's amount of rain, like you have to tend to the garden and be attentive to the garden, but at the same time, the garden's going to grow the way the garden is going to grow. There's so many things that are out of your control as the gardener and as a parent. And so learning to work with that, it also, I think that can be so freeing as well too because we can have such good intentions and we can be, we can be so invested in our kids, but there is, like, there's so many things that, just our kids' genetics, the experiences that our kids are having in school, there's so many factors that are involved in developing their body image and just even developing who they are that we can't put all the weight solely on us as parents, as directing the course of, like, this is the way they're going to be because well, A, it's going to fail because they have free will and they're going to do it and they're going to, and they're going to do things that we don't like sometimes. Renae:  But they're also going to have their own minds and learning to cultivate that in the sense of thinking of ourselves as gardeners. To me, it's such a freeing way of thinking, freeing but also a huge element of responsibilities still in parenting and you know, realizing we don't have to be perfect parents but we have to be attentive and attuned and that's so much more, I think, gracious comes to my mind. Like we can be gracious with ourselves and we can even start that self compassion talk with ourselves too. Because sometimes our kids do things that we just, we just don't like. And it's, it's, we can, yeah, we can learn to be still present and attuned and still tend to the garden of our children. Jen: I think too, when you put, you know, when you have, you're trying to will your child to be a certain way and bringing it back to body image, what we have talked about in a previous podcast is sometimes the biggest hurdle for mothers and fathers as far as letting go and doing the things that we kind of know need to be done to help your child develop a healthy relationship with food comes down to accepting your child's body for what it is sometimes, you know, and that can be really a big hurdle for men and women and they come, you know, men, we all come with our own experiences. So for a woman who grew up being teased about her weight on the playground and that that becomes a wound and that wound goes festering her whole life. And then she has a daughter and starts from a very young age trying to control her daughter's food intake because she's so afraid of her daughter being fat and having that same experience that is such a hard thing to deal with. Jen:  But ultimately you have to, you know, our own body acceptance is one thing. But as a parent you have to accept your child's body as well for what it is. And it can just, it can be so tempting and some people just do it unconsciously trying to kind of control their child's body size. But ultimately I don't think you're doing your child any favors, you know, by trying to, will them into a certain body size so they don't get teased. You need to work on developing that resiliency at home and that positive body image and- Renae:  and a lot of that comes down to language as well, too. And learning to talk about our bodies in a way of like what is your body capable of doing and exercise is so important. Not even, like there's so many health benefits that you are all aware of for exercise from, you know, depression and anxiety and just in addition to just bodily health benefits and you know, for mental health benefits as well too. And but reframing exercise and reframing moving our bodies in a way not to reduce our shape or to change our weight, but rather to promote health because then we're moving from a place of not lack. We don't, we want to move to a place of fullness and not where we're changing our bodies to become smaller, to become, to reduce in size but rather to become more fully alive and more fully who we are. Renae:  And I think a lot of that even, so that's one thing that we can do just when we come to exercise. But then the other thing with exercise, because it is so important, and I also, I have parents talked to me about this as well, is that, you know, do things together and make it fun and make it a time of like bonding and where you're experiencing your body in new ways together. And I mean, and it doesn't have to be something like going for a hike or going for a swim, you can do some simple things like dancing or my kids are really little so even like wrestling. Jen:  Right. Renae:  Lots of things that we can do where we can, like, move our bodies in just, like, daily ways that are fun and active. Right? Jen:  Right. Yeah. Annie:  It looks a lot more like play, you know, than, which I think trips a lot of people up, a lot of parents up when they think about, you know, getting active as a family. It's like I don't, when we get asked to have a family, it's not like we're doing an aerobics youtube class, we're, like, we're running and we're playing, we're jumping, we're, you know- Renae:  Playing hockey, climbing trees. Like there's lots that you can do and it's about lifestyle, though. It's learning to experience your body in a way as like a lifestyle that is a vessel to adventure and voyage in the world. Annie:  Yeah. Kind of on that same note, you were on the tip of the iceberg there, Renae is, your second point is to be mindful of your language by cultivating all of who they are and you know that we focus on what we value. So we need to value and grow all parts of our kids, which I don't know where you are exactly where you were headed but what comes to mind is my dad has the best of intentions, but all the time "What a pretty girl, what a pretty-" like to my daughter, "What a strong boy. What a handsome boy." It's just all very appearance space. And there's definitely, you know, the stereotypical little boy, little girl comments that he always gives. And I'm like, "But we're more than that." Is that, is that what you meant? Renae:  Exactly. And it makes sense that, you know, in first impressions that we do focus on appearance because we necessarily know somebody and we can see the outward physical experience of who they are. So we, you know, it's easy to make why we would focus on that, but especially little girls from such a young age and even a little boys, you know, they're so cute or they're so adorable. If that's what we hear growing up time and time again, that is what we are going to value. You know, you think about the news, the news broadcasts, what's valuable, like, what's going on in the world, right? And so you hear it on every single news station and if every single news station is for our kids is highlighting their appearance, it's beautiful, it's wonderful, that's what they need to focus on. Renae: That's what the is going to become at the forefront of their attention and what they're going to need to invest in, what they're gonna need to pay attention to. And so I really become so mindful even more now having kids and especially like my friend's kids or kids that I meet just focusing on just finding anything that I can compliment that focuses on the intention of cultivating their entire personhood. So if my kids are playing Lego, "Oh my goodness, that's so creative in what you've made that took a lot of hard work" or "Wow, you're so, you're so smart in how you figured out this problem" and really trying to help them expand their awareness about all the things that they are capable of doing and to help them just expand their awareness but then just place value on that and speak into that into their life to know this is good. Renae:  There's so many qualities about you that are so good as well. And that can be hard to do in the beginning. Especially when you see somebody that you know, just meeting your friends' little daughter that you've just met for the first time or just haven't seen her in a long time and she's wearing a really cute dress that she got a really cute haircut and you're like, "Oh you're so cute." And I don't think it's bad. And I really don't think it's bad to say, "Oh, you're adorable." But I would say, like, for every one comment that you give that is appearance-focused, try to find a five to seven comments that are not appearance focused because we live in a highly appearance-focused culture from just the fact that we live on our screens so often. And so it's natural that our attention goes to that. Renae:  So being able to cultivate all those other qualities, that's kind of where I'm going with being mindful of our language because again, that external voice that we hear, we internalize that voice. I was just talking to my debt to my husband yesterday about language growing up and about our bodies and experiencing our bodies. And I said, when I was younger my dad always used to pat me on the back really firm, and then say "solid as a horse." I loved horses and it was such a compliment to me because it meant I was strong and I was capable and I, and that and that always stuck with me. And so there's fun ways that you can do that as well. But yeah, that's just something that kind of like stood up for me and these voices become our voices as we get older. Renae:  I grew up, we covered this in one of our podcasts where Annie interviewed me and my sister and, we grew up with very different body types and so, Annie interviewed us on our experience of this and I grew up with people commenting on my body my whole life, like how thin I was, and I just, it was always there, which really speaks more to the women around me, what was going through their heads, right, than anything to do with me. But I would say that contributed greatly to how I ended up developing my values as a woman, right, of what was important. And so I agree with you. I don't think there's anything wrong with commenting on someone's appearance or complimenting their experience, you know, but in context, like I love how you said, just really think about it in context of the world we live in. Like there's nothing wrong with telling a little girl she's pretty, or for me to tell Annie she looks beautiful today, but when you, yeah, when you put it in context of the world we live in, that's all we're acknowledging about women. And now we have a society full of women who are, you know, they're making themselves sick, trying to pursue appearance ideals that just aren't even healthy, right. Renae: And it makes sense though, why we are pursuing this because it's so much more than our appearance. So we live in this world where we have these images of these idealized beauty standards where women are, tend to be thin. You know, they have flawless skin, they have this, there's so many factors that are unattainable and that continues to shift, you know, depending on kind of what decade that we are in, but there's still ideals of the case. So this is what a woman looks like right now that, you know, she's considered the beauty standard, but it's not just that, it's this beauty standard. It's the subtext to that. It's this pairing of a beautiful ideal now, like an impossible ideal thanks to, you know, Facetune, Modiface or Perfect365 or any one of those apps or just Photoshop in general. So you have this impossible beauty ideal. But then you also have this, this pairing with love, acceptance, opportunities, mattering. All of these, these images are so closely tied to these deeper fundamental qualities that we all want as humans. We all want to matter. Jen: Yes. Success. Lovable. Connection. Renae:  Exactly. And so we're automatically lured in when we see an image like this or we see, we see something that, you know, even on social media, there's a reason that those numbers are there. Like Instagram didn't, or Snapchat didn't make these platforms and think, I wonder if someone's going to use these platforms. It was like, of course not. They know there's a reason why these likes these views, these metrics are there. Because we conflate that with value and we, equate that to mattering to being seen and we all want to be seen. Like that's, as humans, we're wired to be in connection with each other and so we need to acknowledge that it's complex and it makes sense why some of us, why a lot of us, why we strive to have this beauty ideal, but that's where it goes back to that media literacy and teaching kids about the subtext, about the deeper messages, about the deeper ideas of what's actually being depicted, about what actually is being shown here so that we can help them not only critically digest it but then invite experiences into their lives that are going to allow them to live a holistic life where they're not only thinking about their appearance or they're not only thinking about their, you know, their account following on whatever social media platform they're using because it's, it's a complicated issue and we need to, but they're smart and they can grapple with it from a young age and so we need to equip them from a young age because they're using these platforms from such a young age. Annie:  Which I think is a great segue into your third point, Renae, that you encourage parents to be mindful of how many reminders kids have of their appearance and clothing mirrors, cameras social media and how that shapes our value system. And I actually had that experience just the other day. I was thinking, like, I was just having a rough body image day, which, as it happens- Renae: It does happen, yeah. Annie:  And it was just like, it just seemed like I wanted to capture these photos, or these selfies with my kids, but like, I just couldn't, like, it was just there. It was just right in front of my face all the time. Like every time I opened up Instagram it was like, you know, do an insta story, but I didn't want to be in the photo, but I wanted the photo and it was just like, you know, and then, and even how seeing other people's appearance reminded me of my own as well. Renae:  Yes. Annie: Like it had nothing to do with it, but it was like, I mean, I used to do this, I used to struggle a lot with this when I really, really struggled with body image, probably about five, 10 years ago. It was really hard for me to see other beautiful women because it was just a reminder of all the ways I was feeling. I couldn't just separate the two. I couldn't just admire her attributes or features or traits or whatever, or even see her for more than just a physical thing. I just really struggled to get beyond that and it was somehow I made it into a reflection of all the ways I was lacking. And I would imagine that young girls and boys are dealing with that just as much, if not more with the rise of social media. Renae:  Yeah. And I think just to even springboard off what you're saying there, something that isn't necessarily the most popular opinion, but I think it's something that we do need to acknowledge and grapple with is that beauty is,, there are objective standards of kind of like what is a beautiful person? And I mean it's hourglass shape for women. It's hourglass shape, it's clear skin, it's like bright hair, it's white eyes. These are kind of universal standards of what a beautiful person is. And there's been a big push within the body positivity community and I think has been really well intentioned. But at the same time it's actually been perpetuating this obsession and this focus on our bodies because not people are not going to, like I said, it's been, not everybody is, you know, drop dead beautiful. They're just not. Because if we're all beautiful, then we're actually all average. Beauty is above average. Renae: And the problem with that though is that with hearing that is thinking that "Well, then I'm of lesser value." And that's not at all what I'm saying, and I'm not even talking about inner beauty, we all have inner beauty and because inner beauty is defined by a wide, wide range of like of attributes and characteristics and it's way more important. But this obsession with, you know, liking our bodies for everything that they are, you know, liking all our cellulite, liking every wrinkle, every stray hair, every whatever it is that perpetuates this value system where our focus stays on our bodies. And when we are scrolling on social media, unless you are following like dogs and panda bears or kitty cats, you're being focused on the body, that's just inevitably what's going on. And, so even as like for me as a body image researcher, I have to be so mindful of that. Jen:  And then even like living in Vancouver, I don't live in Vancouver but that's the closest big city that is where I live, Vancouver is world renowned for its architecture on glass, for example. And when what happens when you walk past a glass, like, a mirror, you see your reflection, you, like, check yourself out a little bit. That's just, it's natural. You don't want to feel, you don't need to feel bad about that. But what we do. But then again, it's just that it's that energy that goes back to our appearance. And I think something that we really, really have to be mindful of is that we have a finite amount of mental energy. We have an absolute finite amount of mental energy. And if that is being devoted to our appearance, whether that is good or bad, that is energy that is going elsewhere that cannot be focused on cultivating all aspects of who we are. And so I've really started to take that to heart in my own life. And even just the way even I manage Free To Be and I manage the social media and I manage just the experiences that I invite into my life because it impacts us. It just does. Jen:  The other thing is that we have this as one of our questions in our Balance365 Self Love Journal. So if you take who you are and break it down into a pie chart and if you are kind and funny and a really good friend, a very supportive partner, you know, if you just break it down and if each of those takes up 10% of who you are, who you are, who you consider yourself to be, and appearance is in there, because appearance is part of who we are. If that is 10% of who you are, then when you wake up in the morning with a huge zit or whatever, it doesn't destroy you. It's just a little bit of who you are and you can still function and move along. Or maybe you aren't considered the standard of beauty in our society, but it's just a little piece of who you are, your appearance. Jen:  But the problem is I feel like we have a society of women who were taught that their appearance is 80% of who they are. Renae:  Oh yeah. Jen: And so when they wake up in the morning with a zit, it just, it destroys them or whatever else is bothering them about their appearance. It destroys them and they can barely function in life because their body image is just so, so negative. Or if you have a bad body image day and knowing that your appearance is just a part of who you are, it can allow you to have a bad body image but still function where some people can't get out of bed in the morning when they're having a bad body image day and so really looking at all of who you are, which comes back to what were, you know you had said we need to start teaching our kids and complimenting them for the whole person that they are. Because when we are just complimenting on appearance or just talking about appearance or just scrolling social media and looking at other people's appearances we're starting to build this idea that women are their appearance and then it's just so, so, so then it just becomes, then of course if your parents are 75% of who you are, then 75% of your mental energy is going to go into trying to improve your appearance. But women are just, they are just so much more. Renae: We're so much more than that and yet we're that, that focus on it from such a young age goes to our appearances. So it makes sense that it's so hard to break out of those, like, corseted ideals that we, that we bind ourselves to because that is how we're reinforced and we can't be naive, like, we are, we are rewarded when, when we ascribe or when we try to follow them and let me qualify that, some of us are rewarded and, but we have to be very aware that, that, that power that we get from that that's super short lived. Because it's not true power if, you know, it's going to expire when you're 30 or when your appearance is going to change or if something happens to you. Like that's, we need to, we need to be grounded and centred for deeper things. But it makes sense why we would feel that way and yet we can also work towards then living life differently as well too. Annie:  I've found too, unapologetically, about going to therapy, but one of the things I'm learning is that like my true power comes from within. Like, it's not, I don't get my power from compliments or praise or affirmation or validation from, I don't, I don't get to like outsource my power. And I've tried that for many, many years. Like if they like me then I like me. If they think I'm pretty, then I'm pretty. If they like my work then it's valuable and that feels good in the short term. But it's ultimately not sustain. Like it doesn't fulfill me. And so turning inward, like, do I like me? Who am I? What do I value has been like way more worth my energy than like trying to look a certain way or do a certain thing so other people like me. Renae:  And at the same time, that's like, that's hard to do to put, like, our own beliefs and to put that under a microscope because that can be super uncomfortable to kind of shift away from the thinking that we have had because it does feel good. And then when you think about social media, just going to say one more thing about social media here, you then we are rewarded with those short term signals of those likes, thumbs up and all those things and those things do feel good. You do get, you know the dopamine, a neurotransmitter like dopamine, you get a little rushed and that feels good, but the problem is then we, that's what we ended up seeking more and more and more of that, those short term, the short term validations. And we don't end up doing that deeper work of like, who am I? Renae:  What do I stand for? What do I like? And at the same time living in that tension about acknowledging that our body image concerns don't develop in a vacuum. They develop in context with other people. And so it's going to be so important that we realize that our healing is also going to develop in context with other people where we're going to have to have experiences where people teach us that we are enough, that we are good just the way we are, that we don't have to change, that we aren't too much or too little of something. That healing also is going to have to occur in relationship because we are, we are so wired for relationship. And so it's a, although we want to have, you know, that internal locus of control, we also are dependent on others to be able to have that and also to be seen. Renae:  Cause we need to be seen, we need to matter. And that all happens in context with others. And so it's, I think sometimes I get frustrated when I walk on, when I scroll on social media and I see all these self love inspo quotes and it's, we're shortchanging ourselves because developing these issues didn't develop in isolation. And so healing these concerns isn't also gonna occur in isolation. I just don't, I think that you can find healing through groups on social media, but I'm always so wary of the system, you know, again, because we are rewarded for these likes and these comments and it pulls us and it's so, so powerful. So being able to have conversations like we're having right now where I can see your faces and I can see your expressions. I can see the way you're moving. It's so much more telling than, you know, just liking a post that you put online and it's way more healing and even embodying to be able to do this. And it takes, it's more holistic. It's part of, like, a whole personhood. And again, that goes back to the healing of who we are. Jen:  I wonder what your opinion is on, like, a lot body acceptance slash self love bloggers, influencers, whatever you want to call them. They post photos of themselves, their bodies, you know, in bikini or underwear and supposedly exposing these flaws, right? These "flaws." And people love it and I've heard there's larger organizations like Beauty Redefined talking about how, look if we're trying to acknowledge women as a whole person, we have to move past this constant, you know, barrage of women's bodies. Like if, you know, if you want to love the whole person then we have to look at the whole person. We just can't keep seeing women in bikinis or their underwear showing stretch marks and, I understand what they're saying, but I have to say that personally when I saw that shift start on social media, this is before we founded this company and everything, that was extremely healing for me to see other women's bodies that looked like mine. Like I remember the first time feeling like wanting to sob. Like there's other people out there that look like me. Renae:  Yes, absolutely and I do struggle with this because it's something that it's very, it's very healing to be, when you see yourself represented, you see, you see that as valuable. I think it is important that we do have a wide range of bodies that are out there. And my body has changed drastically after giving birth and being able to see other women's bodies out there, see stretch marks, see saggy boobs, see different things is normalizing and it and that speaks to that deeper issue of wanting to connect and be seen. Right? And we can feel shame when we carry these fears in isolation and we think that we're the only ones and there's just healing by feeling known. And so I think with those photos and that, those, this wider representation of bodies shown is helping a lot of us being known, be accepted. And that in and of itself is healing. And yet at the same time, I also hold the same viewpoint that we do need to move past. We do need to move past just focusing on women's bodies. But they're both incredibly important steps, I think you could say. Or just things that we need to acknowledge intentions that we need to work with. We just can't, we can't dismiss the one and say that it's not healing. Jen:  It's almost like a phase, you know, I had a phase where I was following any woman I could find who was showing her body because I just, I knew I wanted more and more and more of it because it was just so validating for me. Like I just, I felt a release. I felt this just, "Oh my gosh. There's other people out there that look like me" and, but now I feel like I'm in a different phase where I've sort of like, "Okay, yes, there are many other bodies that look like mine and bodies come in all shapes, sizes, colors, and I don't need that in my life as much anymore." Now it's like there's like a phase, I think. Like I feel like I'm on phase two at this point where I- Annie: I personally feel like, cause I feel the same, Jen, but I still post those photos because from time to time, because I do acknowledge that, like, I can acknowledge, like, I know that there's bodies come in a variety of shapes and sizes, but I also know that there's still so many women like you and me and Lauren, you know, five years ago that needed that photo. Jen:  Right. And I see it, I see when you do post pictures of your stomach, Annie, I see when when your stomach is visible in a post, you know, women appreciate it so much. They see this woman who is happy, who is powerful, who loves her body, and has, you know, positive body image and also, is unashamed of these parts of her body that our society- Annie: My humanness. Jen:  Humanness has told us is wrong. It's something that should be hidden. Something we should be trying to fix, something we should be deeply ashamed of. And so I still see it. I still see it because there's always new mothers coming. You know, sometimes we get disconnected almost from what a new mom experiences. And I look back and think, my goodness, the change in me from when I had my first 10 years ago to now like, I mean I thought my body was ruined. I thought I was an abomination after I had my first baby and I can't and I have to, I have to constantly remind myself that there are women who are feeling like that every single day because it's, you know, things have shifted for me. But I think we live in a world where there's more talk of body image today than there ever has been. Like 10 years ago, I feel like it wasn't even an option to love your postpartum body. It wasn't. Where now it's an option, but we still have to make women aware of it. Renae: I think that the tricky line or the line that we want to be aware of, especially from when I think about the research standpoint behind this is the objectification. So when I think sometimes of when I scroll through social media and I see photos of someone posing in a very objectifying pose and then they have this like liberating quote underneath, if you took away the quote and you just were to see the image for what it was, it can reinforce women as being objectified. And again, that's something that, and because we have limited mental energy when we are, when we objectify ourselves, we can internalize that voice. And we then we view our bodies as objects to be consumed, as objects that are, like, viewing pleasure for somebody else. And again, it's so subtle that because we just, we are inundated with diet culture. Renae: We're inundated where women are still seeing so often, in an objectified sense. And so it's something that I just, I really am very mindful of with myself, with even like, even just the research and what I encourage people to do as well too, thinking about, you know, like I do think it's so good to post to how photos of diverse ranges of bodies, but there's a big difference between posting a body that is, you know, having fun or happy or like doing something versus a body and like, and then let's say, you know, I've got stretch marks or I'm, or I've got the, you know, my body's changing. I want to be able to show this is what a body can look like. And this is an aging body and this is a good, and I'm still having fun and I'm having, and this is great, but there's a difference between posting a photo like that versus spending, you know, a long time like A, photoshopping my photo, taking a hundred selfies and then wanting to post only the right photo and then doing it in a way that's, like, very objectifying. Renae: I think we really have to think about like our intentions behind why we are posting those photos. And again, that's not like the most popular opinion to hold. But then when you again, when you look at the research and when you look at how much time and energy we invest into our bodies, I think it's just, we only, we only get one life to live. And I think that's like the driving force behind why I'm so passionate about this message is we get one life to live. And when, I was just at a funeral on the weekend and prior to the funeral I had felt like I had nothing to wear. And then when I was in, when I was sitting in my chair and I was listening in the church to what was being said. And it was, she was an absolutely amazing lady. Renae:  I was like, it would just, it just puts everything into perspective for me again about my goodness, I get one life to live. I want to live my life. I don't want to worry about these additional pressures that I invite into my life. And so tying that all back to the initial conversation about like, about the images that we're seeing out there, I think it's healing. We just need to be mindful of how much energy we're investing into it. Cause when you're dying, we're not going to think, "Oh, I wish I posted more photos of, you know, of my body doing this." And yet at the same time we want to be like, I feel comfortable because I did see women in their bodies, right? So- Jen: Yeah. Right. That's a perfect response. Annie: I want to be mindful of our listeners times here. And I know I have, I'm looking at the outline and I have questions that I still wanted to ask you. So what I would love to do is invite you back next month. How's that sound? Renae:  Great. Annie: Like we said at the beginning, we could talk about this forever and ever. But before we pop off, I know that you have a special gift for our listeners. Do you want to tell them about that? Renae:  Yes, I would if I, for anybody that's listening, if you would like to be trained in Free to Be our research based curriculum, it helps, it's for youth in grades five, six, seven and eight. It helps develop media literacy, cultivate their individual and their group strengths. It really helps with developing gratitude and just a whole, it's a six session program and I want to be able to offer any listener that's out there 30% off the curriculum so you can use the discount code. I believe it's FreeToBeBalanced and I don't know if you're going to link to that in the show notes or anything like that. And so that we can take this conversation outside of, you know, this wonderful podcast and you can actually start to have these conversations with your kids and you can even potentially have your, if you're a teacher you can be trained to run it in your school. And so that we can continue to spread this impact wider because I do just think that there's such a powerful shift that's happening now with the conversations that we are happening and people are wanting and especially kids, they want to have these conversations. And so you are welcome to use a discount code FreeToBeBalanced and to get 30% off the curriculum. Annie:  That's so awesome. Thank you so much. Jen:  Yeah! Annie: So excited. We're changing the world. Renae: Yes we are. Annie:  Okay. Well thank you so much for joining us. We have to come. I want you to come back because I know Jen in particular to had a great question about addressing all of these topics with boys and if there's any differences that we need to be mindful of in our approach and our discussion and our topics. And, because you do work with boys and girls, which I think is really great that this, your program is not just for females. So, we'd love to have you back. We'll set up a time and continue this talk. Okay? Renae: Thank you so much. Thank you for having me. Jen: Thanks Renae. Bye. Annie:  This episode is brought to you by the Balance365 program. If you're ready to say goodbye to quick fixes and false promises and yes to building healthy habits and a life you're 100% in love with, then checkout Balance365.co to learn more.

On this episode, I talk with Erin Treloar founder of Raw Beauty Talks and Free To Be Talks. Erin is all about self-love and self-acceptance and is not afraid to really open up about the hard stuff. Which we definitely get into in this powerful and vulnerable episode.What initially drew me to Erin was the incredibly raw and honest images she posts of REAL women and their REAL bodies on her @rawbeautytalks Instagram account. If you haven’t already, please do check it out. It’s so incredibly refreshing and empowering. So, without further ado… lets dive right in.

The holiday season can be tough, with so many opportunities for unwelcome commentary on our bodies, diets and exercise routines from well-meaning relatives. What’s worse, our kids are exposed to it too. Jen, Annie and Lauren get together and discuss how to set boundaries this holiday season so you can enjoy your family time together, free from the discomfort of unwanted opinions and negativity. Learn how to be the change you want to see in the world and find peace among the chaos of diet culture. What you’ll hear in this episode: The damage of body shaming discussion on children The normalization of negative weight related discussions and body judgments in popular culture Reasons to set boundaries around negative body talk around your kids A comparison of the diet industry and tobacco industry’s tactics to normalize something that is damaging Statistics around the prevalence of disordered eating What is your grocery checkout stocked with? Preparing your kids for the road How to set boundaries in a clear, kind-hearted, non-confrontational way How negative body talk is like second hand smoke The role of media literacy in filtering negative messaging Prevalence of weight loss advertising and negative media messages What to do when you don’t feel comfortable setting a boundary Getting curious about where people are coming from with body commentary The discomfort of change Talking to our kids about the diet industry, body image and media messages Raising critical thinkers Free To Be Talks Workshops Effecting change at the individual and community level   Resources: The Habit That’s as Toxic to Children as Smoking Five Stages of Behavior Change Episode 13: How Your Body Image Impacts Your Children with Hillary McBride Free To Be Talks Learn more about Balance365 Life here Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Play, or Android so you never miss a new episode! Visit us on Facebook| Follow us on Instagram| Check us out on Pinterest Join our free Facebook group with over 40k women just like you! Did you enjoy the podcast? Leave us a review on Apple Podcasts or Google Play! It helps us get in front of new listeners so we can keep making great content. Transcript Annie: Thanks for joining us here on Balance365 Life Radio, I am really excited about this episode and we actually jumped this topic to the head of the line because we felt it was just that important, especially this time of year. Today Lauren, Jen and I discuss the importance of setting boundaries with your friends and your family as it pertains to discussions about bodies and behaviors. Women’s appearance, exercise routines and eating habits seem to be free game and constantly open for discussion and debate. Conversations about who’s gained weight, who’s lost weight, how Aunt Jan has given up carbs or the latest supermodel that got her body back so quickly after baby number 3 can unfortunately be heard across the globe. After working with thousands of women, we know that with the holiday season many of us might find ourselves on the receiving end or at the very least, within earshot of comments of this nature. This unwelcome commentary can be shocking, infuriating but most importantly, it can be really harmful, especially to the little eyes and ears that are watching and listening. On this episode, we dive into the importance of women and mothers setting boundaries around diet talk and body shaming, share ideas on how to respond and address these comments if and when they happen and finally, how to help you and your children process those same situations. As always our free private Facebook group can be a great space to continue the discussion if you so wish, you can find us on Facebook at Healthy Habits Happy moms. We’ll see you on the inside. Lauren and Jen, we are all three together, it’s been a while. Lauren: Hi! Annie: You’re just here for the party, we know, Lauren and Jen, how are you? Jen: Good, I really missed recording with you guys. I was away and you did like 3 episodes without me. Annie: I know, you you were on a little family vacation. Jen: Yeah. Annie: Looked fun, we missed you though. Jen: Yeah, I missed you guys too but it was like my first holiday in, with my kids, in years so it was a lot of fun and I have to say, for the parents listening that it is a whole different world to go on holidays with children who are 5-6 and 9 than babies and toddlers. Lauren: That’s really good to hear. Annie: So there’s hope. Jen: Oh yeah, well it just got, for us, it got to a point where I was like “We aren’t traveling anymore. I can’t do this. I can’t take 3 car seats and a double stroller and a diaper bag on every holiday. It’s too… I might as well just stay home because it’s more stressful on holiday.” So now it was just surreal to just be sitting back and watching my kids handle themselves, like carry backpacks and yeah and just like not have myself loaded down, you know, like, I just had a backpack too. It was amazing. Annie: I heard a comparison made that there’s a difference between vacation and trips and you take a trip with your family. It’s not, it doesn’t always feel like a vacation, it’s sometimes a lot of work. Jen: The other thing when you have little babies and toddlers is we would always do like AirBNB apartments because we just felt like we needed the space and with kids getting up in the night we, you know, we just needed like different rooms etc and but that meant that we were also cooking and cleaning up after ourselves on “holidays” too and I would sometimes be like “Why did we leave home? Like, I just feel like I’m in the kitchen all the time.” So on this trip we only stayed in hotels and we ate out for every meal and I can’t even tell you how great that was too to not cook for 10 days. It was amazing. Annie: Yeah that sounds really nice and the weather looked so nice. Jen: Yeah, it was beautiful. Annie: Yeah, but we’re happy to have you back- Jen: Thank you. Annie: Because we have a really good topic and I think it’s going to be best addressed and best covered with all three of us on board and this is actually kind of a combination of two topics that we’ve discussed either in a podcast or a blog post that we kind of married together and we actually are doing kind of a last-minute recording because we wanted to squeeze this topic in before the holidays because what comes up so frequently in our community, which if you’re not a part of it,it’s Healthy Habits Happy Moms on Facebook, over 40,000 women, it’s a great place to continue the discussion, ask questions get support if you need it but something that comes up in our community often is how to respond to comments about your body or behaviors and how then to set boundaries with family members and with it being the holiday season, it seems like we’re exposed to so many more opportunities to have those comments thrown at us, right? And it’s a really common experience with women in our communities that are our bodies and our behaviors, what’s on our plate, how we are exercising, how we’re talking, how we look, always seem to be free game for discussion and debate and it’s really regardless of your body shape and size because prior to this, when we covered it in a podcast the first time, I did a poll in our community and women of all shapes and sizes has experienced comments and remarks like this and it can not only be shocking but infuriating and they can also be harmful to everyone within earshot, right? Jen: Right. Annie: and Jen, you made, it was, we’re approaching the two year anniversary of the blog post that you wrote that was amazing and it’s still on our blog today, but you made an amazing analogy of the harmful effects of body shaming, disordered eating behaviors, negative body talk as it relates to smoking, can you share a little bit about that? Jen: Yeah, first of all, it’s wild, two years ago. Annie: I know. Jen: And so we are talking about the same things, which is great, we hope it’s sinking in, two years later, so I am the analogy queen in our community and I find that sometimes drawing parallels in other areas of life is what really gets the stuff to stick with women and the other thing, when we talk about disordered eating, I just want everybody to know that in, like, eating disorder, I guess, literature and circles, dieting is considered under the realm of disordered eating, so dieting is disordered eating, so when you are talking about dieting around the Christmas dinner table or Thanksgiving dinner table, you’re actually talking about disordered eating, your disordered eating behaviors and 100 years ago it might have been shocking that somebody would would speak up at dinner to say that they’re purposely starving themselves or cutting out carbs but over the years, it’s become normalized, so it’s part of our normal conversation to discuss these things. So what I compared it to in this blog post was that at one point, smoking indoors used to be completely normal. My step mom talks about how she had my older sister in hospital and they whisked the baby away after and the first thing she did was light up a cigarette in the hospital. And everybody had an ashtray right beside their hospital bed and so this was about 40 years ago. Today, that would never fly. So the damaging health effects of smoking and secondhand smoking is well researched, we know the effects, smoking is banned in public spaces, we keep it away from children. I don’t know what the rules are down there but in Canada, it’s illegal to smoke cigarettes inside of a vehicle if you have anyone in the car that’s under 16. And we have family members who smoke and I don’t think they would dream of smoking inside my house, however if they came over and tried, I would immediately, I would have, you know, no issue with saying “Oh, can you please take that outside, this is a smoke free home.” So the parallel I drew is that we also know the effects of discussing bodies and disordered eating. We know that they have serious long term effects to your own personal health but also to the little ears or the children in the room listening to all of this and setting a boundary with friends and family around smoking is probably not a problem for anyone listening, however it still feels extremely uncomfortable to set this boundary around talking about weight, bodies, disordered eating, dieting but if you really put that into context, “Hey, we know this is extremely harmful.” And if you’re having trouble setting the boundary for yourself, just really think, like, now is the time that you need to step up for your kids and say “Hey, no this is not OK to discuss around our kids. If you want to talk to me about this later, that’s fine but you know, there’s little ears in the room.” Annie: And oftentimes, you know, the difference here is that unlike smoking, many people aren’t aware just yet of the harmful consequences of this type of talk and how contagious it is and how detrimental it can be to the eyes and ears that are watching and listening and I think if people knew, which is part of our mission, right, to draw attention to the negative consequences of dieting and body shaming and weight talk, if people knew like they know the harmful effects of smoking, you know, maybe they would be changing the conversation. Lauren: Yeah. Jen: Absolutely, so it’s sort of like, in the “olden days” they talk about how the big tobacco companies went to great lengths to hide the negative, they knew what the negative effects of smoking were and they went to great lengths to try and sort of cover that up and they were lobbying government et cetera, et cetera, they would have doctors as their spokespeople saying smoking was safe and that, basically, is happening today with diet companies. You have, you know, huge diet companies, they have crazy popular spokeswomen or spokespeople, I should say, fronting their brand but the research hasn’t caught up with the public yet. It’s not common knowledge yet so, but we know, it is well researched, we have decades and decades of research about how harmful dieting is, how harmful body shaming is especially for children. Like, body based teasing is one of the biggest contributors to future disordered eating/eating disorders. So the other thing is that I think I feel like awareness around mental health is just coming to the forefront, I guess, where in years gone past we haven’t talked about mental health as much. The focus really has been on physical health. And now we’re starting to see more talk of mental health and taking care of our mental health and what that means for people but I don’t think talking about mental health is as widely accepted yet either, so it’s quite a big conversation. This podcast, what we wanted to cover and talk about in just sort of bring to people’s consciousness is it’s OK to set boundaries in your home around what you expose your children to. Annie: Right, because it’s, you know, essentially in that blog post, which we can link in the show notes, along with all the research or just a handful of the research that we’ve looked at and essentially, you know, kind of compares it to being trapped in a smoky room, you know. Jen: Right. Annie: When, you know, when you are filling your home over the holidays or your environment with that sort of talk, I mean, it’s, the parallel is there, right? And it’s not it’s not one time that’s going to make or break but it’s that constant exposure, the fact that they don’t have a place to process this, that they can’t escape, that they don’t have an alternative, that there’s no discussion about, you know, the consequences and why you would do this or that, like that’s really what we want to begin to bring to light, right? Jen: Yeah and children are listening, like they want to listen, right? I catch my oldest son, he’s 9, I see him all the time, I can just see him, he’s paying attention to what the adults are talking about, he wants to know, he’s interested, he’s learning how to be an adult, right? And so this is something that we pretty much hand down to our children as acceptable and OK. So what we see today and we see this a lot in our Facebook group and just on social media in general, you hear a lot of women talking about, or sharing stories of somebody commenting about their body and how offended they are, whether somebody asks them if they’re expecting or if they’ve lost weight or what diet they’re on and women are saying, “Hey!” You know, they’re starting to notice, people comment on our bodies all the time but this is learned behavior, right, this isn’t some evil person, you know, or mean-spirited person popping out and just body shaming. It’s learned behavior. We make it acceptable at an early age so anybody who’s making those comments today probably grew up in an environment where it was absolutely OK and I think we’re still in that environment. If you are checking out at the grocery store and it’s full of trashy magazines around you, you’ll see that, we have, it’s open season on women’s bodies and men’s to a degree. You might have a National Enquirer there talking about whose, which celebrities have “let themselves go”, what weight this celebrity is, what weight that celebrity is, who has “gotten their body back after baby”, you know, the quickest. It is open season and that’s the kind of stuff that goes on around us that might not even be, you know, in our consciousness, right, so if you start paying attention, you’ll see it’s not just happening around the dinner table at Christmas, it’s happening everywhere and at some point you need to step up and say “Hey this is not OK” and you need to go to your children and say “This is not OK. This is not what our family values and just because, you know, Uncle Ted, you know, talks about women’s bodies that way, it is absolutely not OK” and you need to set that boundary with Uncle Ted or whoever your uncle is or Aunt, and let them know that’s not OK and if that has to happen in front of your kids, all the better. Annie: I just want to circle back, just in case people aren’t familiar with some of the statistics out there that I feel like we share frequently but you can never hear these enough, in my opinion but I think as you said the research is out there, it’s our kids are listening and some of the statistics about it are just shocking, I mean as it pertains to adult women, approximately half of women engage in disordered eating and risky dieting practices, including one 3rd of women report purging. Jen: Right. Annie: 75 percent of women report that their weight interferes with their happiness, which, I’ve been there, that’s been me at various points in my life. A study of 5 year old girls, a significant proportion of girls associate diet with food restriction and weight loss and thinness, like, how do they know this? Where are they learning this? Jen: Right. Absolutely. Annie: 37 percent of girls in grade 9 and 40 percent in grade 10 perceive themselves as too fat, again, where are they learning this? Why do they think that? More than half of the girls and a third of the boys engage in unhealthy weight control behaviors, for example, fasting, vomiting, laxatives skipping meals or smoking to control their appetite. Again, like, they’re listening, they’re watching, they’re observing. Jen: Absolutely. Lauren: Mhmm. Jen: And by the time a girl is 17 to 18 years old, that stat is up to 80 percent, so 80 percent of 17 and 18 year old girls believe they need to lose weight, like these aren’t like, you know, these aren’t like, outliers. This is the majority of our population and again, this is all learned behavior. Annie: Righ. And it’s, you know, we have a little bit of control over here and that’s why we’re in the business that we’re in because it’s not just enough for the three of us to parent our kids, like we need everyone on board to really make a really big impact. Jen: Absolutely. Annie: So that’s the part of our mission, to like, create this big wave, this ripple effect, like everyone’s on board and everyone’s promoting healthy balance lifestyles without all this other unnecessary, unhealthy behavior. Jen: Totally, I look at my local supermarket and the changes that they’ve made to have a healthier physical environment for my children so when I take them shopping there are, they’re called, like “junk food free aisles” so that you don’t have to deal with, like, your kid seeing the treats and wanting, you know, asking for treats so you can choose to go down those check outs instead of the ones that are lined with candy and also, in my local supermarket, they have a basket of fruits and vegetables for kids to just take for free to eat while you’re shopping and so I think “Wow, look at these changes they’ve made for our children’s physical health, right, taking away the less nutritious food and offering more nutritious food. So now let’s take it a step further and how can they support my child’s mental health?” So it’s one thing to have an aisle that’s free of junk food, but now I have to take my kids down this aisle that is instead stocked with magazines full of body shaming and my kids can read now and so I’m going, which is worse? You’ve taken away the junk food, you’ve replaced it with this basically, junk for your brain. Annie: Right. Jen: Essentially, yes. Annie: But, you know, as we said, I remember when you wrote this blog post and you and I had this conversation and I think we came across the saying “Prepare your kids for the road, not the road for your kids” because this is unfortunately part of our culture, you’re going to be outside of your bubble, especially in the holiday season or you know, even as summer approaches, you know and more skin is shown and you’re at barbecues or you know, year round, it happens, you’re going to be outside of your little bubble, inside of our community it’s like, this stuff doesn’t happen, right? Lauren: Right. Jen: Right. Annie: But when we leave our homes it’s like, or we go to the grocery store, it’s like “Oh my gosh, it really is everywhere.” It’s going to happen. So what do you do when it happens? You set a boundary. You can set a boundary and as you said, it can be so uncomfortable to think about setting a boundary for yourself and speaking up for yourself, but if you put it in terms of like, “I’m standing up for my kid” then it’s like- Jen: Totally. Annie: As a mother it’s like, “Oh”, it becomes so much easier, right? Jen: Yes, then it’s like “Roar!” Annie: Mama Bear, right? Mama lion. Jen: Exactly. Annie: Yeah, so, you know, setting boundaries, let’s talk about how to do that because it can be uncomfortable. It can be scary but I think you, in that blog post again, you gave a couple very concise, clear, non-confrontive, kind-hearted responses and I think you could just put these in your back pocket, you can put your own twist on them. The first one is “Hey, I understand that you’re struggling with your eating behaviors right now, can we save this conversation for when little ears aren’t around?” and I think that’s perfect, you know, so I picture myself at the buffet table, you know, and my Aunt Jan’s putting stuff on her plate saying “I shouldn’t have this many carbs and I’m just so excited to eat this and I’ll just have to work it off afterwards and it’s going to go straight to my butt” and you know, like that sort of talk. Jen: Yeah, total disordered talk. Annie: Right. Jen: Totally normalized in our culture. Annie: Oh yeah, like, I mean, 4 years ago I probably would have been like “Ahahaha!” Jen: Right. Annie: Now I’m like “Oh no, no, no, no, no, no!” Jen: Yes. Annie: “Could we save that conversation for when little ears aren’t around” and it’s, the three of us have had this conversation so many times, we feel very comfortable being like “Yeah, I’d be happy to talk with you about how to balance your meals, more sustainable practices for your health and wellness and how that talk isn’t really serving you, like we could talk that all day.” Some of our listeners might not be willing or interested in having that conversation, that’s totally cool too, but I think that just acknowledging little ears are listening and we’re just going to zip it, right now, right? Jen: Yeah, like if somebody, I mean, I know we all probably swear a little bit but if somebody like came roaring into the kitchen and was just like dropping F bombs every second word and your kids are sitting there you might be like, ” Hey, there’s little ears here, maybe we could cut that back” Except Annie’s giggling, because she’s like, “No.” Annie: Yeah, yeah. Jen: Don’t tell me how to talk. Lauren: Well, Jen, I think the second hand smoke analogy was so, so good because I’d like to coin the term now “secondhand dieting” because like, that’s basically what it is and if you’ve listened to the podcast you’ll know I started dieting when I was 12. Jen: Right. Lauren: And it’s because secondhand dieting was constant. It was a constant topic of conversation in my family, especially on one side compared to the other, but it was it was constant and I would never, you know, blame my family for any of that, everyone’s, as we know, we’re doing our best, no one’s doing it on purpose, but it’s how, it’s how, like, my grandma’s generation and my mom’s generation was raised. Jen: Absolutely. Lauren: And they didn’t know any better, just like before we don’t know any better about smoking. Jen: Right. Lauren: And so when I think back to that, like, I would sing the Jenny Craig song like- Jen: Oh my goodness. Lauren: Like I knew the Jenny Craig song, right? Jen: Let’s hear it, Lauren. Lauren: 1-800-Jenny-20. That’s all I remember but like I would sing it and I just cringe now thinking about all the stuff I listened to and that’s kind of what I draw from, if I ever have to set that boundary for my kids, like my daughter just turned 5 so I’m at the point now where it’s going to, I’m going to have to be more intentional and more careful about it moving forward and if you’ve listened to the podcast you’ll know last year we already had like our 1st incident with that at preschool, talking about, you know, good food versus bad food and I had to start that there earlier than I even thought I would, but at this point going forward, it just gets, you have to be more and more intentional about it. Jen: And it’s everywhere so as Annie had mentioned before, like you can’t, you can, media literacy is one of the most powerful tools in this sort of disordered eating/negative body image crisis we are in with our children and I can’t always be there to filter for my kids but I can teach them how to filter, right? Lauren: Right. Jen: And so one thing I noticed, we haven’t had cable for years and last Christmas we were up at the ski hill here where we live and we were staying there over the Christmas period, staying at a hotel and we would watch T.V. in the evenings and I was shocked at how many diet commercials came on what we’re watching T.V. and I probably wouldn’t even have noticed this 5 years ago because it was just part of my life, it’s part of everybody’s lives, where now I’m so conscious of it and suddenly I’m going like “We are muting the T.V. during commercials because this is ridiculous.” Every single commercial break there was a Weight Watchers ad and just horrible toxic messaging. I remember just. in particular. one woman saying “I can eat whatever I want and still lose weight” and I was like, “Oh! My kids are taking this BS in.” Like, so then we started muting it during commercials because I just, I just do not, and I’m like, you know how kids are, they just, like, stare at a T.V. and they’re just zoned out, whether it’s the TV show or the commercial and I was just like, this is not something I want them hearing over and over and over every commercial break, it’s like, they’re like hypnotized by it, being brainwashed. Annie: And I think that goes back to, you know, just that awareness that you said before, Jen. Sometimes you don’t know how well prevalent it is until you start listening and you just, like that might just be your first step, you don’t have to take any action, maybe you don’t set a boundary this holiday season, maybe- Jen: Right. Annie: where you’re at is you’re just starting to pay attention and you create awareness and you know, you know how, like, when you’re pregnant or maybe you’re trying to get pregnant and all you see is pregnant women? Jen: Right. Lauren: Yeah. Annie: Like, that’s what this is. Jen: Yeah it is. Annie: The power of suggestion. Once you see it, it’s everywhere. I mean, I swear, I tell people, like, “What do you do for a living?” “Oh, I’m a personal trainer” and it’s like, all of a sudden they go to confession. Jen: Right. Annie: It’s like, “Oh my gosh, I haven’t been to a gym in years, and I ate, oh my gosh, I need to get back and I need to do” and I’m like “It’s OK, I’m not, like, you don’t have to repent your sins to me.” Jen: Right, right. Annie: And it’s just, yeah, like it’s the magazine titles, it’s the conversations with your hairdresser when you’re getting your haircut, you know, the woman that’s evaluating your food at the grocery checkout line, like “Oh is this a good food? I heard this was healthy for you.” You know, it’s like, it’s just everywhere. Jen: You can’t, you have to be really, you have to be, and that’s why it’s so important to hand those tools off to your kids to be critical thinkers about it, right, so my son when we were on this holiday, we’re talking about at the start of the show, we were watching, again T.V. in the hotel room and this, we’re in San Diego, California and one thing I’ve noticed from previous trips to California is weight loss advertising is cranked up there compared to where I live in Canada, which might just be the culture of California, so it’s like, it’s on the radio, everywhere and I just found it, like, “Whoa! it’s definitely not as prevalent where I live” so the commercial that came on was like a freeze the fat thing, like, it’s like a, I don’t know if it’s like a liposuction procedure or whatever, it’s just a commercial and it came on and I was like “Here we go!” and my son was like, “This is ridiculous. It doesn’t even work.” I was like- Annie: Nice. Jen: Yeah! So you can, right, you can teach them and I try and just say to my kids like, you know, we obviously don’t shame people who are dieting or whatever, you have to be careful of that too, as well, but I just say, like, “You know that stuff doesn’t work and there’s a lot of companies out there who will take advantage of people who are struggling and with how they feel about themselves but you know this stuff does not work and there’s a lot of fake things that go on behind the scenes that trick you into believing it works but it doesn’t.” So, yeah. Annie: Well and to add to that, just as there are people in my life that I love dearly and I look up to in many ways, they also smoke. Jen: Right, absolutely. Annie: There’s a lot of great people that are also stuck in diet culture and body shame and weight talk and that doesn’t mean that they’re bad humans or they are terrible, you know, like I love them just as much and they don’t need shaming. Jen: No. Annie: You know, my mom smoked for years and I hated that element of her but I loved her, I hated that behavior, I should say, but I love her dearly. Jen: Well, you know, if you go back to our stages of change podcast where people are with smoking is OK, the awareness is there, it’s not good for you, the tough part with smoking is that it’s an addiction, right, so they are constantly and I mean, I think pretty much all smokers are in the cycle of change, most smokers are probably thinking of quitting all the freaking time, it’s just so difficult. Where, when it comes to dieting and disordered eating, there’s not an addiction there but if you’ve listened to previous podcasts about the diet cycle, it almost mimics one where you just can’t stop trying to diet, like, you just keep going back to it, you get stuck in that cycle but most dieters are not even, the awareness isn’t even there that this is something that is unhealthy for them and that they could even stop doing it. It’s just part of their everyday life, like, that’s what we do, we diet or we don’t diet, we’re on the wagon or we’re off the wagon and that’s what their whole life is, right? So when you are setting this boundary with people, just keep that in mind, like, this could be brand new information to them, it likely is, that this is, that your family doesn’t diet, your family doesn’t body shame, your family doesn’t sit around talking about your own weight or other people’s weight and it’s harmful. It’s harmful to you and it’s harmful to children to hear ,that will be brand new information. So if you decide to set that boundary, go gentle, as Annie said, you don’t have to set that boundary, that is an option, I would personally talk, if I was in a situation where I felt very uncomfortable setting that boundary, I would make sure to speak about, I would speak to my children about it later “Hey, you know, when Grandpa was saying this or that, like, just so you know ,that’s not what we believe in, that wasn’t accurate.” Annie: You’re jumping ahead a bit. Jen: Oh, I’m sorry. Annie: You just got so excited. No, I think that’s a great segue, just to circle back to setting boundaries, you know, like comments, if you need some actual statements, I always have a hard time putting words on my emotions and my feelings, so I like to have these one liners to put my back pocket that I can practice saying and it can be, you know, like I said before, “Can we save this conversation for when the kids aren’t around? My child can eat what he or she wants, eyes on your own plate, please. Can we change the subject? Simple as that and then as far as comments made to you about your own body or about someone else, whether they’re in the room or not, I mean, one of my personal training clients talks about how her father always comments about women in the media and their bodies. Jen: Right. Annie: Like it doesn’t matter because somehow they are immune because they can’t hear us and they’re celebrities and like they don’t count. Jen: Right. Annie: But it’s still worth addressing in my opinion but the first step is decide if you want to have that conversation or not. And sometimes you may not want to, it might be the wrong time, the wrong person, you don’t have the energy and in fact, Lauren and I remember you talking about a family member that you were just like, “This just isn’t a conversation I’m willing to have with her at this point in my life, in her life,” do you remember that? Lauren: Yeah, there’s a lot of my family members actually that I do not really speak about nutrition or whatever unless I’m asked and so as far as I go, it’s like a boundary unless I’m asked about it. Annie: Right. You know, and then the second option, I think, too is, if someone makes a comment to you, I think Jen, you gave this suggestion a couple times to be curious and just simply say, “Why do you ask that? Why do you say that? Can you tell me more? That’s interesting” and just see where they’re coming from and see where that goes because so often, you know, someone makes a comment to me and again, years ago, you know, 4 years ago Annie would have been like “Ugh!” and I would have been offended and embarrassed and ashamed and angry and infuriated but so often, like, that’s not usually how conversations, like, end well. Jen: Yeah, or “Why does, you know, why does that matter to you? Why is this relevant? How does that affect your life?” Annie: Yes, am I reacting this strongly because I’m worried that there’s some truth in what they’re saying, is this about my own body shame and my own negative weight talk and all that, you know, is this the baggage I’m carrying or is this theirs? And now I’m clearly, like, they make a comment about a body or my body and it’s like “What Susie says about Sally says more about Sally than Susie”, like they’re separate, like that’s on them and yeah, that has nothing to do with me. But decide if you want to have the conversation, then be curious, you know, I think that’s a great way to, if you’re not super confrontational, if you don’t want to be confrontational, like, “Why do you say that? Like, that’s interesting, why do you ask that?” and then find your voice. You know, Jen, I think we’ve talked about, like, you tend to be a little bit more like, “No, I don’t want to do that, like, we’re not going to talk about that, let’s change the subject” where I would be like, “Hey, look, squirrel! How about the Cubs?” like, you know, like something like just totally redirect or you could be super sincere and honest and say “I’m sure you’re coming from a place of love and you care but your comments are hurtful, your comments are alarming, they’re concerned, fill in the blank.” Jen: Or “I’m really uncomfortable discussing my body or other women’s bodies in a setting like this or period.” Annie: And you know what? It might get awkward. Jen: Yeah that’s the the thing but- Annie: It might get a little like- Jen: But change is uncomfortable, right? So, you know, we talk all the time on this podcast about needing a cultural shift or we hear it all the time on social media, society needs to change. Well, guess what? We are society and change is uncomfortable so this is going to be uncomfortable but it doesn’t have, discomfort doesn’t mean mean-spirited, discomfort doesn’t even necessarily mean confrontational, it just means uncomfortable and I think if women paid attention, they would actually see that there are many areas of our lives where women take on discomfort in order to not make the people around us uncomfortable and I’m at the point where I’m like, “Why? Why do I have to take on that discomfort all the time?” Annie: Yeah. And as we’ve said numerous times already on this episode, if you can’t find the courage to do that for yourself, maybe you can find the courage to do it for your kids. Jen: Absolutely. Lauren: Yeah. Annie: And if you’re not there yet, if you’re just like creating awareness and like, kind of getting your feet under you and kind of deciding what, like, where, how you feel about your body, where you stand, like, that’s really cool too, like this wasn’t an overnight process for the three of us. It’s not like we just jumped from 0 to 100 and now we’re, like, “Chop chop! Like, no, we’re not going to do that!” Like, this was like a, this is a process- Lauren: Definitely. Annie: Where we grew in our comfort to have these conversations. Jen: Is there time for me to share a quick personal story about just this as a reality? Annie: Yes. Jen: So this is based on my own history of very disordered eating and lots of weight talk with my sisters and the effects of that. So my kids are a bit younger and I’ve been able to be on the ball with them from a younger age which has been great. My sister’s children are older, my younger sister, my older sister’s children has children as well, but I’m speaking about my younger sister’s children and so her daughter at 9 years old, she came to me once I got to the house, she came to me and she had just sprouted up. And you know, different kids have different growth patterns but what with my nieces she kind of plumped out first and then she shot up. So what happened when she shot up is that her jean shorts became too big on her around the waist and it happened in just a matter of a couple of months so I get there one day and she comes up to me and she’s like “Auntie, look, Auntie, look!” and she was trying to show me the gap between her denim and her waist and I realized she’s trying to show me and basically bragging at validation and connect with me that she has lost weight and she’s 9 years old but I also was hit with this just feeling like I wanted to throw up, thinking of all the times I had shown up at their door to talk to my sister and the first thing out of my mouth was “I lost 5 pounds last week” or “I put on 5 pounds” or, and my sister’s oldest daughter had just grown up with her aunt, who she loves and admirers and looks up to so much, I’m pumping my own tires here but I’m pretty sure that’s how she feels about me. Annie: Naturally. Jen: She has grown up with that “cool auntie” speaking like that around her so of course she’s now coming to me at 9 years old and trying to connect with me over it the same way she sees her mother and me connecting and she’s just trying to be part of our crew and I was devastated and so not OK with it and so had to take a hard look at myself and go, “This is not OK .This is not OK that our family talks like this and I have been a big contributor to it and I will not do this anymore.” So that was about 5 years ago now, so very happy to see it going in the other direction and what my sister says now, because now we’re these empowered women fighting diet culture, she can’t believe that her daughters have gotten to the age they have and not talked about dieting with her yet, where my sister remembers dieting at a way younger age than even her girls have, so there’s hope, there’s hope here, right, we can make a huge impact. Annie: Absolutely and you know, I just had a little lunch talk a couple weeks ago and it was with a group of about 10 or 12 women, mostly moms and they cannot, they kept expressing concern about how to say the right thing, like, they’re so worried about saying the right thing when it comes to body talk and how we talk about how to take care of our bodies and how to respond when they’re talking about weight loss or how their body looks or they want to wear makeup or they want to wear certain types of clothes. They’re just so worried about saying the right thing that they sometimes don’t say anything at all. And I think, you know, when they were asking about what to do and how to approach this, the first thing that came to mind was what Hillary McBride and her Mothers Daughters and Body Image podcast which, if you haven’t, if this is a topic that concerns you, if you haven’t listened to that, please listen to that, but she pretty much hammers home that perfection, in this situation isn’t required, it’s intention and consistency that make the most difference and so you don’t have to say the right thing all the time. It’s really your intent to have the conversation behind it and just as I said, you can just be curious about when people make comments about your body you can just be curious about what your kids are saying, like, how does that feel when this happens? How do you feel about that? Did you enjoy that food? How’s your body feeling? How did you feel when Aunt Jan or Uncle Ted made that comment about me or about your body or when Gramma said that about your plate? Did you think about that at all? Like, it can just be as simple as that. Jen: The thing is if we talk about diet culture brainwashing children and us, we don’t want to be on the other end, brainwashing our kids, right? Like I want to raise critical thinkers and the way to do that, I think, is to ask them these questions and ask myself these questions and maybe and you can even process it together, right? Like that is totally OK. Annie: Yeah, but I think the key is, you know, is setting the boundaries when you’re ready and when you’re comfortable and then to keep having these conversations with your family members, with your community, with your kids, like, they’re hard conversations, they can be uncomfortable, it can be a lot of emotional ties and baggage that come along with some of these conversations but it’s worth it. It’s totally worth it and I just want to kind of wrap up by just acknowledging, again, that we’ve kind of touched on this but there’s work to be done kind of on sort of 2 levels here: at the individual level, you know, like our own selves deciding what our own biases, acknowledging those, creating awareness about our own behaviors, our own talk, you know, like, how many days, how many times a day do you talk about someone else’s body or are you reading about someone else’s body or are you listening to comments about someone else’s body? At one point in my life that consumed me. I talked about other people’s body all the time. Jen: Right or what articles are you clicking on where, you know, there’s those little like click baity ads at the bottom, “How this mom got her body back in 3 weeks” or “What this mom’s abs looked like at 4 weeks postpartum” and then the picture just like cleverly hides and you’re like, “I gotta click on this.” Lauren: That was me constantly reading about every single diet. Jen: Yeah, right, where now I just, you know, I know it’s all B.S. and I know the more we click on it, the more we are telling these marketers that we want to see more of it, right and they’ll just keep showing us more, so I’m like “Nope” and on Facebook when I see stuff like that I report it as inappropriate. Annie: So yeah, there’s definitely work to be done on an individual level, you know, our own behaviors, our shame, our conversations that we’re having and then at a community level, you know, and community can mean just in your own home, you know. That’s- Jen: Yeah, so speaking of that, I’ll just share what I’ve been up to since my holiday is that I just completed my Free To Be Talks facilitator training and I’m going to be teaching body image workshops in my children’s school and I am trained to be able to talk about this to kid boys and girls in grade 6, 7 and 8 and so that was me, that was on my vision board last year where, you know, we were doing all this work through Balance365 and I was like, “You know what? I really want to be out there in my community and I would love to start talking to children about this when they’re younger.” So I just did that training and that’s my way of contributing and being part of the conversation in my community and I would encourage anybody who is interested in that to to check out Free To Be Talks. It’s a nonprofit organization out of Vancouver, Canada but when I was on the training there was lots of women from the States on the training as well who will be doing this in their schools but you can and that’s a thing, like don’t, do not, you know, we read these stats to you guys and it’s shocking and you can sometimes feel powerless, like how can I even stop this? But you can and you can make a difference in your community and if all of us had that attitude, the change would come. Annie: I just get chills and for verklempt, like we could do this, guys,! Yes! Jen: Yes! Annie: I think that’s awesome, snaps for Jen. Jen: Thank you very much. Annie: Yeah, anything to add, Lauren? Anything you want to add before we wrap up? Lauren: No, I think you guys hit it all, I know I was just kind of a more quiet bystander, but you guys were just right in your groove and I think you guys hit it out of the park. I’ll just note that as someone who experienced secondhand dieting, and then the path that it led me down, that fuels me to be the change and not be afraid to stand up and say “Hey, this isn’t OK, we’re not going to talk about this.” Annie: Oh yeah, I think that’s, I mean, I don’t want to speak for you, Jen, but I think that’s why the three of us are in the business we’re in, we’re trying to be the change that we needed when we were younger. Jen: Yeah, totally. Lauren: Yes. Annie: Like, the voice, the message, the solution, the opportunity that we needed when we were younger and that’s, you know, how we are paying it forward, so to speak and I’m going to start crying so I’m going to stop talking. Yeah, so anyways, just to wrap up, when you’re out of your bubble this holiday season, moving into the new year, moving into summer, spring and summer, don’t be afraid to have a conversation. It doesn’t need to be confrontational, argumentative it could just be like “Hey, could we change the subject. I don’t want to talk about this when my kids are in earshot and you know, just start creating awareness and shifting the conversations that you’re having within your home and with your girlfriends and with your family can make a really, really big impact. To me, it’s, I picture waves of an ocean and you know, what one wave just kind of moves right into the other and it’s like, we just all connect to each other, eventually. Lauren: Yep. Annie: And if we’re all in the same page, if we’re all moving the same direction, we can make a really, really big impact on our own lives and more importantly, the lives of our kids so they don’t have to grow up in diet culture and negative body image and weight talk and all that junk. Jen: Yes, we do not have to normalize for them what was normalized for us. Annie: Alright, awkward ending. Lauren: As usual. Annie: You know what, that’s going to be on my topic, on my to do list today, so find a way to wrap up the podcast that’s not extremely awkward. Jen: That’s not like, “OK, bye!” Lauren: Okay, bye! Annie: No. But, alright, thanks guys. Lauren: Love you, bye! Annie: It was fun, kay, bye! Jen: Bye. Lauren: Bye. The post Setting Body Talk Boundaries Over The Holidays appeared first on Balance365.

Renae Regehr is a Registered Clinical Counselor and is the founder of  ‘Free To Be Talks’, a non-profit organization that promotes positive body image to youth, parents, and educators through education in schools, speaking events, and media. Through her Masters of Counseling Psychology, Renae developed and tested a research-based curriculum: Free To Be. This program empowers young people to reach their full potential by developing media literacy awareness, cultivating individual strengths, building resilience to social pressures that impact body image, and nurturing a positive social environment. IN THIS EPISODE WE DISCUSS: Seeking external validation (her body & appearance) because she thought it would make her feel good about herself only lead her to feeling lonely, anxious, and preoccupied with her appearance ‘Killing Us Softly’ documentary by  Jean Kilbourne and how it changed the trajectory of her life. Opened her eyes into the subconscious effect of advertising. The myths (appearance ideals) we subscribe to, because of advertising. And how men and women are represented in media. Instead of trying to eliminate all the negative effects of body image, which historically is what Body Image Programs had done, Renae took a different approach. She saw power in cultivating resiliency & strength to withstand the […] The post LPP #74 Building Resiliency Against “Appearance Ideals”, Wanting To Matter, & Media Literacy with Renae Regehr appeared first on Liveng Proof.

Renae Regehr is a Registered Clinical Counselor and is the founder of  ‘Free To Be Talks’, a non-profit organization that promotes positive body image to youth, parents, and educators through education in schools, speaking events, and media. Through her Masters of Counseling Psychology, Renae developed and tested a research-based curriculum: Free To Be. This program empowers young people to reach their full potential by developing media literacy awareness, cultivating individual strengths, building resilience to social pressures that impact body image, and nurturing a positive social environment. IN THIS EPISODE WE DISCUSS: Seeking external validation (her body & appearance) because she thought it would make her feel good about herself only lead her to feeling lonely, anxious, and preoccupied with her appearance ‘Killing Us Softly’ documentary by  Jean Kilbourne and how it changed the trajectory of her life. Opened her eyes into the subconscious effect of advertising. The myths (appearance ideals) we subscribe to, because of advertising. And how men and women are represented in media. Instead of trying to eliminate all the negative effects of body image, which historically is what Body Image Programs had done, Renae took a different approach. She saw power in cultivating resiliency & strength to withstand the […] The post LPP #74 Building Resiliency Against “Appearance Ideals”, Wanting To Matter, & Media Literacy with Renae Regehr appeared first on Liveng Proof.